Coding interview preparation in India is no longer one single thing. The company you apply to now decides which interview you get. At TCS or Infosys, you get an aptitude test and pattern-based coding questions, watched over a webcam. At Flipkart, Razorpay or a global capability centre, you get a debugging task, a 90-minute machine coding round, and sometimes a round where you are allowed to use AI. Most prep guides still describe one interview that no longer exists everywhere.
This post explains both types, shows you how to find out which one you will face, and gives you an eight-week plan you can follow while working full-time. It is written for engineers with zero to five years of experience who want to switch jobs. It is also for final-year students getting mixed advice from seniors who sat their interviews in a very different market.
What changed in coding interviews in 2026
Three things changed at the same time, and all three moved in the same direction: away from questions you can answer from memory, towards questions that show how you think.
Fewer blank-page problems, more debugging. Earlier you got an empty editor and a question like "implement an LRU cache". Now you are often given code that almost works, and asked to find the bug. You read it, you guess what is wrong, you test your guess, and you explain your thinking out loud. That is the skill you use at work every day, and it is the hardest one to fake.
Some companies now give you an AI assistant. Meta tested a 60-minute round on CoderPad where you get an AI chat window, a codebase with several files, and access to models like GPT-5, Claude Sonnet, Gemini and Llama. They are not testing whether you can write the function. They are testing whether you notice when the AI writes it wrong.
The machine coding round became more important at Indian product companies. This round is not new, but it now carries more weight in the final decision. When a DSA round no longer separates good candidates from average ones, the 90-minute "build something that actually runs" round does more of that job.
There is a market reason behind all this. India's hiring index for office jobs rose 12% compared to the previous year in February 2026, and the financial year ended 8% up - the strongest job growth in three years, according to Naukri's JobSpeak report. More jobs means more applicants per job. More applicants means companies need tests that actually filter people out.
Why did coding interviews change? Candidates started using AI
The honest reason your interview got harder is not that companies raised their standards. It is that a lot of the people applying before you were quietly using an AI assistant.
Between June and December 2025, the share of candidates using AI help during technical interviews roughly doubled, from about 15% to about 35%. Tools built just for this, like Interview Coder and Parakeet AI, reached hundreds of thousands of users. Some of them openly advertise that the interviewer will not notice.
Companies reacted in two ways, and the difference between the two matters to you.
The first reaction was to catch people. Software that checks if you switch browser tabs, listens for changes in your voice, tracks your eye movement, and turns the interview into a conversation so the signs show up. This is a race between cheating tools and detection tools, and races like that also catch innocent people. If you pause for forty seconds to think during a webcam-monitored round, some systems treat that the same as someone reading off a second screen.
The second reaction was to redesign the interview so that AI help stops deciding the result. Give the candidate the code instead of asking them to write it. Ask why, not what. Bring people into a room. The companies handling this best in 2026 are not the ones with the smartest cheating detector. They are the ones that accepted candidates will use AI, and rebuilt the interview so that it no longer matters.
What this means for you: memorised answers are worth much less than before, and being able to talk clearly about code is worth much more. If you practise silently, you are preparing for the 2023 interview.
Service company vs product company: which coding interview will you get?
This is where general advice goes wrong. Advice written for a Flipkart interview will send you in completely the wrong direction if you are sitting for TCS NQT. Going the other way is worse.
| Service companies | Product companies & GCCs | |
|---|---|---|
| Who | TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, Accenture | Flipkart, Razorpay, PhonePe, Swiggy, Zomato, CRED, India offices of global companies |
| First round | Online test watched over a webcam. TCS NQT runs on TCS iON, usually monitored remotely. Infosys uses InfyTQ. | Online coding test, two or three DSA problems, fixed time limit |
| Aptitude section | Yes, and it can knock you out before anyone even opens your code | Almost never |
| Coding round style | Standard question banks, pattern-based problems, built to screen thousands of people | How you approach the problem and how you make it faster, plus more debugging every year |
| Machine coding | Rare | Common, around 90 minutes, and often the round that decides it |
| Design round | Usually only at senior level | Low-level design from 2 years, high-level design from 4-5 years |
| How long it takes | Runs in batches, can take months from test to offer | Two to six weeks from start to finish |
| What gets you rejected | Missing the aptitude cut-off, or failing the webcam monitoring check | Solving without speaking, code that does not run, no answer to "why did you do it this way?" |
If you are moving from the left column to the right, the gap is bigger than the topic list makes it look. Our guide on the service to product company switch in India covers the parts of that move that are not about coding.
One more thing worth knowing. The big service companies moved back to office through 2026. TCS now has a five-day office week, with attendance linked to variable pay and promotions. Infosys allows only five work-from-home days per quarter. Wipro asks for three days a week from January 2026. Final interview rounds are moving the same way. Ask whether your last round is in person before you book train or flight tickets.
What is the machine coding round in Indian interviews?
You get about 90 minutes and a short problem describing a small system. A parking lot. An expense splitter like Splitwise. A snake and ladder game. A notification service. You have to build a program that actually runs - not pseudocode, not a diagram on a whiteboard.
The machine coding round is mostly an Indian format. You will see it at Flipkart, Razorpay, PhonePe, Swiggy, Zomato and CRED. It hardly appears in global prep material, which is why people who have read every American interview guide still walk in unprepared.
Here is what you are marked on:
- Does it run? A half-finished program that compiles and runs scores better than a complete one that does not. Get something working in the first 30 minutes, then add to it.
- Is the class design clean? Each class should do one clear job, with clear names, and no single 400-line class doing everything. At most companies this carries the biggest share of the score.
- Can you add to it easily? The interviewer will usually ask you to add one new feature at the end. If that means rewriting half your program, you have already answered the question.
- Did you handle edge cases? Not all of them. Just the obvious ones, on purpose, with a comment where you knowingly skipped something.
- Can you explain your choices? Razorpay's interviewers specifically look for candidates who can say why they picked one option over another, and who ask questions to clarify the problem before they start writing.
What you are not marked on: a database, a web framework, tests for everything, or a clever design pattern used where a simple class would do. Building more than you need looks like bad judgement, and bad judgement is exactly what this round is meant to catch.
The practice that helps most here is repeating it with a timer. Pick five common problems, build each one in 90 minutes with the clock running, throw the code away, and do it again a week later. Most people fail this round because they are too slow, not because they lack the skill.
Can you use AI in a coding interview?
Only if the interviewer tells you that you can. Using an AI tool without permission is treated as cheating, and the punishment ranges from being rejected on the spot to having an offer taken back.
Something most posts will not tell you: this AI-assisted format started in the US. The rounds we know about are at global companies. It is reaching India slowly and not everywhere, mostly through the India offices of those same companies, and plenty of Indian companies have not touched it. Do not rebuild your whole preparation around a round you may never face.
So ask the recruiter. In writing, before the round: "Is any AI assistance allowed or provided in this interview?" It is a fair question, it takes one line, and nobody will think less of you for asking. The answer changes how you prepare for that specific company.
If AI is allowed
Then what they are testing has changed. It is no longer whether you can write the function. It is whether you can read AI-written code quickly, spot what is wrong with it, and explain out loud why you would change it.
A practice method that works:
- Pick a medium problem you have not seen before. Ask an AI model for a full solution.
- Start a ten-minute timer. Read the code and say out loud, line by line, what it does.
- Find at least one thing that is wrong, likely to break, or slower than it needs to be. There is almost always one - an empty input that is not handled, an O(n²) loop that did not need to be, or code that changes the input array when it should not.
- Say what you would change and why, in the same words you would use with an interviewer.
- Only after all that, run it.
Do this twenty times and you will have practised exactly what these rounds test. It is also the skill that keeps you valuable at work, now that AI writes more of the first draft. We cover that shift in more detail in will AI replace software engineers in India.
If AI is not allowed
Assume you are being watched. Close every other tab. Keep your face in the camera frame. And keep talking - do not go quiet for a minute at a stretch. To a human and to a detection system alike, long silence looks the same as reading off a second screen.
Not sure which interview you are preparing for?
Twenty minutes with someone who actually interviews candidates at your target company will tell you more than twenty hours of reading. On Amigzo, you book a working professional in your field and pay only for the minutes you use.
An 8-week coding interview preparation plan for working professionals
This plan assumes six to eight hours a week, which is what someone with a full-time job can keep up without ruining their sleep. If you have more time, finish it faster. Do not stretch it beyond twelve weeks, because past that point you forget the early topics faster than you learn the new ones.
| Weeks | Focus | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | Core patterns | Arrays, strings, hashing, two pointers, sliding window, binary search. Around 40 problems. Give each one 25 minutes before you look at the solution, then solve it again from scratch two days later. |
| 3-4 | Speaking while you solve | Trees, graphs, heaps, recursion. Around 40 problems, but solve every single one out loud while recording yourself. Play three of them back. You will hear the problem straight away. |
| 5-6 | Machine coding and debugging | Five machine coding problems, 90 minutes each, with a timer. Plus two debugging sessions a week: take working code, break it, give it to a friend, and swap. |
| 7-8 | Mock interviews and company research | Four full mock interviews with a real person. Look up the actual round structure at each company you are applying to. Prepare three stories about your own work, detailed enough to survive follow-up questions. |
On numbers: 150 to 200 problems solved properly beats 500 rushed through. Striver's SDE Sheet, with around 180 problems and video solutions, is the sheet most people in India use, and it works well as a base for weeks 1 to 4. But the sheet itself is not the goal. The goal is being able to look at a new problem and think "this is a heap question" within thirty seconds.
Skip aptitude preparation completely if you are only applying to product companies and GCCs. It is a real filter at service companies and a waste of your evenings everywhere else. This is the biggest waste of time we see in Indian prep plans, and it comes straight from placement advice written for a different kind of employer.
Common coding interview mistakes that cost people offers
Preparing for the wrong interview. Six weeks of aptitude practice before a Razorpay interview. Or the opposite: walking into TCS NQT with 200 LeetCode problems done, not knowing there is a maths section that can end your day before anyone opens your code.
Solving without speaking. This is the most common reason people get rejected at product companies, and the one candidates notice least. You solved it. You got the best time complexity. You also said about eleven words in forty minutes. The interviewer now has no proof you can work with other people, and in a round built to test how you think, silence looks like either memorisation or luck.
Memorising solutions instead of patterns. This was always weak preparation. In 2026 it is close to useless, because the next question is "why does this work?" and a memorised answer has nothing behind it.
Skipping machine coding practice. People read about this round, understand the idea, and never once sit down with a 90-minute timer. Then they hit minute 70 with nothing that compiles. Reading about a timed round does not prepare you for a timed round.
Treating the hiring manager round as a formality. It is not. At most Indian product companies, this is where your level and your salary number get decided. Bring three stories about your own work, each strong enough to survive three follow-up questions. If an offer does come, our salary negotiation scripts for India cover the conversation that follows. And if two offers arrive at once, how to choose between two job offers in India covers that.
Key takeaways
- Find out which interview you will face. Service and product companies went in different directions in 2026. Ask the recruiter for the round structure before you plan even one week of preparation.
- Practise out loud. Every format that changed this year changed towards explaining your thinking. Silent practice prepares you for an interview that is going away.
- Use a timer for machine coding. Five problems, 90 minutes each. Most people fail this round because they are slow, not because they lack skill.
- Ask whether AI is allowed. One line to the recruiter. Guessing wrong is costly either way: using AI without permission is treated as cheating, and preparing for a round you never face wastes weeks.
- Skip aptitude if you are targeting product companies. It is a real filter at service companies and dead weight everywhere else.
Frequently asked questions
Quick answers about coding interview preparation in India.
How long does it take to prepare for a coding interview in India?
Eight to twelve weeks at six to eight hours a week, if you already write code at work. Three to four months if you are starting with very little practice. What matters most is not the total hours. It is whether you practise explaining your thinking out loud, because that is what the 2026 rounds actually test.
Is LeetCode still worth doing in 2026?
Yes, but for a different reason than before. An AI can write correct answers to most easy and medium problems in seconds, so simply remembering solutions is worth less now. What still helps is knowing the patterns well. If you can see quickly that a problem is a sliding window or a heap question, you can judge any solution - including one an AI wrote.
Can I use AI tools during a coding interview in India?
Only if the interviewer tells you that you can. Some global companies have started running rounds where they openly give you an AI assistant. Most Indian companies have not, and using a tool you did not tell them about is treated as cheating. Ask the recruiter what the format is before the round. It is a fair question and nobody will think less of you for asking.
What is the machine coding round in Indian tech interviews?
A timed round, usually about 90 minutes, where you build a small working program from a short problem - a parking lot system, an expense splitter, a notification service. It is common at Flipkart, Razorpay, PhonePe, Swiggy, Zomato and CRED, and rare outside India. You are marked on whether it runs, whether the class design is clean, and whether you can add to it easily.
How many DSA problems should I solve before interviewing?
Around 150 to 200 problems solved properly beats 500 rushed through. Striver's SDE Sheet, with about 180 problems, is the one most people in India use. Give each problem 20 to 25 minutes before you read the solution, then solve it again from scratch two days later.